Nicolai Sennels (born 1976) is a Danish psychologist. His first appearances in the Danish media concerned his unorthodox therapy methods that he developed as the only psychologist at Sønderbro, the youth prison (see here, here, here, here and here). He taught the young prisoners about mindfulness meditation and developed a special program on anger management. Sennels also developed a psychotherapeutic method that focused on teaching criminals with a low understanding of emotions and empathy how to take responsibility for their own behavior. In 2008, the prisoners of Sønderbro voted the facility as the best prison in Denmark. The leader of Social Services in the Copenhagen municipality concluded that this was due to the work of Nicolai Sennels (Amagerbladet, November 3, 2008).

At a conference on immigrant crime in 2008, arranged by the Copenhagen municipality, Sennels said that one should not use the term “criminal immigrants,” but “criminal Muslims,” since the majority of criminal immigrants have Muslim backgrounds. Seven out of ten inmates in the Danish youth prisons have immigrant backgrounds, and almost all of them are Muslims. Sennels was threatened that if he were to discuss his experiences, he would risk losing his job. This story developed into a national debate on the freedom of speech and became a widely discussed topic in the Danish media (please see here and here), and the Minister of Integration joined the discussion.

Sennels decided to publish a book on his experiences, Among Criminal Muslims. A Psychologist's Experiences from the Copenhagen Municipality, which was well received in both the official Psychologists Union's magazine and the newspapers. He found himself a new appointment at the Danish Ministry of Defense, and now once again he works as a psychologist for children and teenagers.

Sennels consulted on the case against Omar Khadr, a convicted terrorist serving in Guantanamo. He also contributed a chapter to the Dutch book Islam: Critical Essays on a Political Religion, along with Raymond Ibrahim, Hans Jansen, Michael Mannheimer, Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or and other renowned critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.

Spencer: Nicolai, people know you mainly for your articles on the psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners (please see here and here). You have also contributed your professional insights in the case against the Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr. You wrote several articles, as well as a book on your conclusions. Could you give us a brief account of your findings?

Sennels: There are many differences between people brought up as Muslims and those who are brought up as Westerners. I identified four main differences that are important in order to understand the behavior of Muslims. They concern anger, self-confidence, the so-called "locus of control" and identity.

Westerners are brought up to think of anger as a sign of weakness, powerlessness and lack of self-control. "Big dogs don't have to bark," as we say in Denmark. In Muslim culture, anger is seen as a sign of strength. To Muslims, being aggressive is in itself an argument and a way of gaining respect. But we should not be impressed when we see pictures of bearded men hopping up and down, shouting like animals and shooting in the air. We should take it for what it is: the local madhouse passing by.

In Western culture, self-confidence is connected with the ability to meet criticism calmly and to respond rationally. We are raised to see people who easily get angry when criticized, as insecure and immature. In Muslim culture it is the opposite; it is honorable to respond aggressively and to engage in a physical fight in order to scare or force critics to withdraw, even if this results in a prison sentence or even death. They see non-aggressive responses to such threats and violence as a sign of a vulnerability that is to be exploited. They do not interpret a peaceful response as an invitation to enter into a dialogue, diplomacy, intellectual debate, compromise or peaceful coexistence.

"Locus of control" is a term used in psychology, and relates to the way in which people feel that their lives are controlled. In Western culture, we are brought up to have an "inner locus of control," meaning that we see our own inner emotions, reactions, decisions and views as the main deciding factor in our lives. There may be outer circumstances that influence our situation, but in the end, it is our own perception of a situation and the way we handle it that decides our future and our state of mind. The "inner locus of control" leads to increased self-responsibility and motivates people to become able to solve their own problems. Muslims are brought up to have an "outer locus of control." Their constant use of the term inshallah ("Allah willing") when talking about the future, as well as the fact that most aspects of their lives are decided by outer traditions and authorities, leaves very little space for individual freedom. Independent initiatives are often severely punished. This shapes their way of thinking, and means that when things go wrong, it is always the fault of others or the situation. Unfortunately, many Westerners go overboard with their self-responsibility and start to take responsibility for others' behavior as well. The mix of many Westerners being overly forgiving, their flexible attitude, and Muslim self-pity and blame is the psychological crowbar that has opened the West to Islamization. Our overly protective welfare system shields immigrants from noticing the consequences of their own misbehavior and thereby learning from their mistakes and motivating them to improve.

Finally, identity plays a big role when it comes to psychological differences between Muslims and Westerners. Westerners are taught to be open and tolerant toward other cultures, races, religions, etc. This makes us less critical, impairs our ability to discriminate, and makes our societies open to the influence of other cultural trends and values that may not always be constructive. Muslims, on the other hand, are taught again and again that they are superior, and that all others are so bad that Allah will throw them in hell when they die. While most Westerners find national and cultural pride embarrassing, Muslim culture's self-glorification, massive use of inbreeding, the rule that only Muslims can marry Muslims and their all-pervading social control function as self-protecting mechanisms on the levels of culture and identity.

In general, Westerners are taught to be kind, self-assured, self-responsible and tolerant, while Muslims are taught to be aggressive, insecure, irresponsible and intolerant.

Sennels: Integration is dependent on motivation, freedom and intelligence. In other words, immigrants have to want to integrate, be allowed to by their family and friends, and mentally have to be able to do this.

People coming from cultures that are aimed mainly at physical survival, and in which religious practice and adherence to cultural traditions give more social status than having a good education and being self-supporting, usually are not very productive if they can live on the state. If on top of that, they can live in closed communities among others with the same culture and language, there is very little reason for them to get involved in our society. The only solution is to make the lack of integration so unpractical and economically non-beneficial that the only attractive choice is to receive our offer of state-sponsored repatriation.

As history and Muslim societies have show us time and time again, there is no need for more bloody examples before the majority does as expected. Muslim societies only have to kill, rape, incarcerate, kidnap and beat a few, before the rest "voluntarily" prefer Sharia to integration.

Thirdly, handling intellectually demanding jobs in our high-tech societies, is not easy for people brought up to believe that the Qur'an and Hadith, not school and science, has the answers. Being brought up in a Muslim family also makes it difficult to adapt to Western social conduct at workplaces, including contact between the sexes and emotional control. The fact that almost half of all Muslims are inbred, often many generations in a row, also does not increase cognitive abilities. In most cases, our workplaces demand that the employees are able to take initiative and be creative and self-responsible, which are all human qualities that are not welcomed among people who are first of all expected to blindly submit and who live in surroundings that punish independent thinking and behavior, sometimes even with death.

Spencer: As a psychologist, what is your explanation as to why Muslims oppress women?

Sennels: I see two psychological explanations for the oppression of women in Islam.

John Adams, the USA's 2nd president, said that he studied warfare so that his children could study agriculture and their children could study art. Abraham Maslow formulated a similar idea, the "hierarchy of needs," which shows how we aim toward a state of full development, possessing complete inner and outer freedoms, spontaneous playful creativity and love for all.

While Adams's and Maslow's views describe the goals and aims of our Western society beautifully as the full development of an individual’s potential, they do not apply to Islam or Muslim tradition. The aim of Islam and Muslims is dominance, not self-realization. Islam and Muslim culture is an aggressive movement, and giving space to female qualities such as sensitivity and empathy would be a hindrance, since it would allow for less aggressive human tendencies to emerge. Diplomacy, compromise, tolerance, democracy, compassion, sensitivity and empathy have to be locked away both on an internal and external level. On the outside, the oppression of women limits their influence, and their aversion against femininity in the outer world helps Muslims to also repress it inside themselves on the psychological level. Oppression of women is thus a psychological method of hardening a culture on the outside and people on the inside.

The other reason why Muslims oppress women and female sexuality, is the fact that women are simply stronger when it comes to sex. And it does not work for omnipotent, jealous and insecure Muslim macho-men that they in the most naked and vulnerable situation of all are the weaker party. Muslim men compensate this by oppressing their women and locking them up in apartments and ugly clumsy garments. The more embarrassing it is for the man that the woman is stronger in this essential aspect of life, the more he must dominate her in daily life. I had contact with two prostitutes who both said that Arab men did not last very long in bed. In many Muslim societies, a women's ability to enjoy sex is simply destroyed by a knife or a piece of glass. The jealous fantasy of the man not being able to satisfy his lustful wife, who therefore looks down on him and may even go to other men to gain satisfaction, is an ongoing source of torment for the wanna-be almighty Muslim man.

True love can only exist on the basis of respect and equality. Muslim societies are therefore full of men and women who never experienced true, satisfying and giving love. The emotional and sexual frustration that results from the inequality of the sexes and being forced to marry a partner that one does not love surely contribute to the aggression and emotional immaturity that Muslims display whenever they are numerous enough to feel that such behavior is acceptable. As one said, "forced marriage is the earthquake and what follows is a tsunami of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, child protection issues, suicide and murder."

Spencer: Why do you think that Muslims living in the West are statistically more criminal and violent than others?

Sennels: Well, there are several reasons. Firstly, the Islamic scriptures teach them that attacking and robbing non-Muslims is completely okay. Muslim culture's degrading view of non-Muslims functions in the same way as war propaganda. By hearing again and again how evil, disgusting and unworthy the enemy is, empathy is removed, aggression is strengthened, and the step towards harming the perceived enemy becomes smaller. The Qur'an and the Hadith are criminal books that allow and even force people to undertake criminal acts.

The psychological differences that I mentioned before also play a role when it comes to the high crime rate among Muslims. Our diplomatic and tolerant attitude is simply perceived as weakness and exploitable vulnerability. We may not like it, but we Westerners must abandon our peaceful, dialogue seeking and politically correct ways if we hope to communicate with Muslim society. Otherwise, they will think we are too scared to risk a conflict. They simply do not respect to or understand our preferred ways of communicating.

Finally, most Muslims are unable to earn real respect from us. Their immature behavior, their lack of contribution to the community and their lack of success makes them look like real losers in the eyes of civilized modern people. And it is not easy to belong to Allah's chosen people, who are supposedly better than the rest of the lot, when in fact they come in last every time. So, because of the lack of well-earned respect, and because of not being able to discriminate between the two, they try to be feared instead. It is Muslims, not Westerners, who invented the word Islamophobia. They want us to be afraid. But we are not. We feel sick of all their parasitism, violent behavior and mistreatment of their women. We have Islamonausea.

Spencer: Is there a psychological explanation as to why political correctness is still so widespread, in spite of the obvious evidence that Islam is an aggressive ideology and Muslim immigration is eroding our societies and destroying our economy?

Sennels: Yes, there is. As I already mentioned, we Westerners are brought up to think that tolerance and openness are positive human qualities. For a long time, we did not have to be aware that such qualities are only a strength as long as nobody wants to harm us. In our meeting with Islam and Muslim immigration, our biggest strength -- our willingness to be open towards the new, that made us so curious and inventive and therefore knowledgeable and rich -- has become our worst enemy.

In my article "Psychological explanations of Political Correctness," I go through the most important social psychological explanations on irrational herd behavior. The most important are the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance.

The bystander effect is when a person uses another reaction to assess a situation. If others do not react, it is interpreted as a sign that the situation is not serious and that there is no need to act. That is why we need more people to act, and in good style.

Pluralistic ignorance appears when people know that there is a problem but feel that it would be embarrassing to point it out. Leftists screaming "racist," the general view that it is impolite to point out obvious weaknesses in others and our culture's definition of good people as being open and tolerant, makes many people keep their mouths shut and even doubt their own sense and senses. When a majority of people, as a result of insecurity and wanting to be a "good person," do not speak their mind, the result is pluralistic ignorance. The famous Danish fairytale about the Emperor's New Clothes is an excellent example.

In the end, it comes down to cowardliness and wanting to be a good person in the eyes of others. Compassion for 700 million women who cannot chose their own sexual partners, clothing or lifestyle, as well as an openly declared war on our values and countries, the quick decay of our big cities into Sharia colonies, and the destruction of our economy as a result of Muslim immigration apparently do not count.

Spencer: Besides writing about psychology, you also write and translate articles on Muslim criminals, politics etc. Are you just a critic of Islam who happens to be a psychologist?

Sennels: No, I am a psychologist who through his work with Muslims became aware of how big a mistake it is to allow Muslim immigration and the spread of Islam in our societies. Together with overpopulation, which should be taken care of by using the enormous amounts of foreign aid to pay people who have less money, this problem is the most dangerous threat to world peace today. It has now been several decades since we passed the stage at which the problem could be solved without blood, sweat and tears.

I have dedicated my life to making people aware of the danger that is already gnawing off big chunks of our cities, economy and freedom.

The most embarrassing thing I can imagine is that the only place in this universe with intelligent life will end as a planet-sized khalifat floating around in space. Just like the bad guys in The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and other archetypal stories of good and evil, Islam does not strive for freedom, happiness and love. Islam strives for the submission of Muslims to Allah and of non-Muslims to Muslims -- a dark, cold and humorless world where men are forced to mistreat their women and everybody is a slave to a god whose only wish is the enforcement of Sharia down to the very last comma. They do what they can to reach their final solution, and we must do what we can to prevent it from happening.

Spencer: You have several years of experience in writing and debating on Islam. You have participated in intellectual debates on Danish national TV and national radio about Islam and Muslim immigration. Many people are critical of Sharia and immigration, but do know dare to speak out -- or they are not sure how to express their views. Do you have any advice to people who feel like that?

Sennels: If we have compassion, people will feel it. Criticizing Islam is like shooting fish in a barrel, but we are not intellectual sadists. We are worried about the freedom of our women and the future of our children, and about our constitutions. And we know that the first and in many cases also the biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. We do not even have to use words like Islam or Muslims. We can just say that religions that oppress women and start holy wars make us sick. If you know that you are right, you do not have to be nervous or ashamed of yourself. Know that our politicians and media aim for the soft middle in society in order to be reelected and to sell newspapers and ads, and it is therefore up to ordinary people to protect our values, society and constitution.

Inform yourself and spread what you find out via email, social media, blogs and letters to the editor and to our politicians and journalists. When among others, the most important thing is that you do not force your view upon them and are happy and relaxed when you express your opinions. Only share your knowledge and your feelings when it feels natural -- wait until others mention the topic and use only a few words unless people really ask you several times what you think. If you are good, you can even use humor.

And do not fear to lose a few politically correct friends on the way. They will thank you in the end.

So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews?by David J WassersteinSource: The JC

By: David J Wasserstein

Source: The JC

Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christendom – through the medieval period into the modern world.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about Jewish existence in the Roman empire from this time on consists of accounts of conversions.

Great and permanent reductions in numbers through conversion, between the fourth and the seventh centuries, brought with them a gradual but relentless whittling away of the status, rights, social and economic existence, and religious and cultural life of Jews all over the Roman empire.

A long series of enactments deprived Jewish people of their rights as citizens, prevented them from fulfilling their religious obligations, and excluded them from the society of their fellows.

This went along with the centuries-long military and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny element in the Christian world, the Jews should not have been affected much by this broad, political issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the Persian empire at this time included Babylon – now Iraq – at the time home to the world’s greatest concentration of Jews.

Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish intellectual life. The most important single work of Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart from the Bible itself – the Talmud – came into being in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a separation between Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule.

Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally specific languages – Hebrew and Aramaic – and to have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local, languages. This in turn must have meant that they also lost access to the central literary works of Jewish culture – the Torah, Mishnah, poetry, midrash, even liturgy.

The loss of the unifying force represented by language – and of the associated literature – was a major step towards assimilation and disappearance. In these circumstances, with contact with the one place where Jewish cultural life continued to prosper – Babylon – cut off by conflict with Persia, Jewish life in the Christian world of late antiquity was not simply a pale shadow of what it had been three or four centuries earlier. It was doomed.

Had Islam not come along, the conflict with Persia would have continued. The separation between western Judaism, that of Christendom, and Babylonian Judaism, that of Mesopotamia, would have intensified. Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance in many areas. And Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult.

But this was all prevented by the rise of Islam. The Islamic conquests of the seventh century changed the world, and did so with dramatic, wide-ranging and permanent effect for the Jews.

Within a century of the death of Mohammad, in 632, Muslim armies had conquered almost the whole of the world where Jews lived, from Spain eastward across North Africa and the Middle East as far as the eastern frontier of Iran and beyond. Almost all the Jews in the world were now ruled by Islam. This new situation transformed Jewish existence. Their fortunes changed in legal, demographic, social, religious, political, geographical, economic, linguistic and cultural terms – all for the better.

First, things improved politically. Almost everywhere in Christendom where Jews had lived now formed part of the same political space as Babylon – Cordoba and Basra lay in the same political world. The old frontier between the vital centre in Babylonia and the Jews of the Mediterranean basin was swept away, forever.

Political change was partnered by change in the legal status of the Jewish population: although it is not always clear what happened during the Muslim conquests, one thing is certain. The result of the conquests was, by and large, to make the Jews second-class citizens.

This should not be misunderstood: to be a second-class citizen was a far better thing to be than not to be a citizen at all. For most of these Jews, second-class citizenship represented a major advance. In Visigothic Spain, for example, shortly before the Muslim conquest in 711, the Jews had seen their children removed from them and forcibly converted to Christianity and had themselves been enslaved.

In the developing Islamic societies of the classical and medieval periods, being a Jew meant belonging to a category defined under law, enjoying certain rights and protections, alongside various obligations. These rights and protections were not as extensive or as generous as those enjoyed by Muslims, and the obligations were greater but, for the first few centuries, the Muslims themselves were a minority, and the practical differences were not all that great.

Along with legal near-equality came social and economic equality. Jews were not confined to ghettos, either literally or in terms of economic activity. The societies of Islam were, in effect, open societies. In religious terms, too, Jews enjoyed virtually full freedom. They might not build many new synagogues – in theory – and they might not make too public their profession of their faith, but there was no really significant restriction on the practice of their religion. Along with internal legal autonomy, they also enjoyed formal representation, through leaders of their own, before the authorities of the state. Imperfect and often not quite as rosy as this might sound, it was at least the broad norm.

The political unity brought by the new Islamic world-empire did not last, but it created a vast Islamic world civilisation, similar to the older Christian civilisation that it replaced. Within this huge area, Jews lived and enjoyed broadly similar status and rights everywhere. They could move around, maintain contacts, and develop their identity as Jews. A great new expansion of trade from the ninth century onwards brought the Spanish Jews – like the Muslims – into touch with the Jews and the Muslims even of India.

A ll this was encouraged by a further, critical development. Huge numbers of people in the new world of Islam adopted the language of the Muslim Arabs. Arabic gradually became the principal language of this vast area, excluding almost all the rest: Greek and Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic and Latin all died out, replaced by Arabic. Persian, too, went into a long retreat, to reappear later heavily influenced by Arabic.

The Jews moved over to Arabic very rapidly. By the early 10th century, only 300 years after the conquests, Sa’adya Gaon was translating the Bible into Arabic. Bible translation is a massive task – it is not undertaken unless there is a need for it. By about the year 900, the Jews had largely abandoned other languages and taken on Arabic.

The change of language in its turn brought the Jews into direct contact with broader cultural developments. The result from the 10th century on was a striking pairing of two cultures. The Jews of the Islamic world developed an entirely new culture, which differed from their culture before Islam in terms of language, cultural forms, influences, and uses. Instead of being concerned primarily with religion, the new Jewish culture of the Islamic world, like that of its neighbours, mixed the religious and the secular to a high degree. The contrast, both with the past and with medieval Christian Europe, was enormous.

Like their neighbours, these Jews wrote in Arabic in part, and in a Jewish form of that language. The use of Arabic brought them close to the Arabs. But the use of a specific Jewish form of that language maintained the barriers between Jew and Muslim. The subjects that Jews wrote about, and the literary forms in which they wrote about them, were largely new ones, borrowed from the Muslims and developed in tandem with developments in Arabic Islam.

Also at this time, Hebrew was revived as a language of high literature, parallel to the use among the Muslims of a high form of Arabic for similar purposes. Along with its use for poetry and artistic prose, secular writing of all forms in Hebrew and in (Judeo-)Arabic came into being, some of it of high quality.

Much of the greatest poetry in Hebrew written since the Bible comes from this period. Sa’adya Gaon, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra (Moses and Abraham), Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi, Yehudah al-Harizi, Samuel ha-Nagid, and many more – all of these names, well known today, belong in the first rank of Jewish literary and cultural endeavour.

W here did these Jews produce all this? When did they and their neighbours achieve this symbiosis, this mode of living together? The Jews did it in a number of centres of excellence. The most outstanding of these was Islamic Spain, where there was a true Jewish Golden Age, alongside a wave of cultural achievement among the Muslim population. The Spanish case illustrates a more general pattern, too.

What happened in Islamic Spain – waves of Jewish cultural prosperity paralleling waves of cultural prosperity among the Muslims – exemplifies a larger pattern in Arab Islam. In Baghdad, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries; in Qayrawan (in north Africa), between the ninth and the 11th centuries; in Cairo, between the 10th and the 12th centuries, and elsewhere, the rise and fall of cultural centres of Islam tended to be reflected in the rise and fall of Jewish cultural activity in the same places.

This was not coincidence, and nor was it the product of particularly enlightened liberal patronage by Muslim rulers. It was the product of a number of deeper features of these societies, social and cultural, legal and economic, linguistic and political, which together enabled and indeed encouraged the Jews of the Islamic world to create a novel sub-culture within the high civilisation of the time.

This did not last for ever; the period of culturally successful symbiosis between Jew and Arab Muslim in the middle ages came to a close by about 1300. In reality, it had reached this point even earlier, with the overall relative decline in the importance and vitality of Arabic culture, both in relation to western European cultures and in relation to other cultural forms within Islam itself; Persian and Turkish.

Jewish cultural prosperity in the middle ages operated in large part as a function of Muslim, Arabic cultural (and to some degree political) prosperity: when Muslim Arabic culture thrived, so did that of the Jews; when Muslim Arabic culture declined, so did that of the Jews.

In the case of the Jews, however, the cultural capital thus created also served as the seed-bed of further growth elsewhere – in Christian Spain and in the Christian world more generally.

The Islamic world was not the only source of inspiration for the Jewish cultural revival that came later in Christian Europe, but it certainly was a major contributor to that development. Its significance cannot be overestimated.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of MuslimVillage.com.

In winter people 'dress up' because it's cold, but in summer people undress. Muslims dress covered regardless out of modesty.

You may dislike it but that's what we like.

I'm not referring to the modesty aspect, I mean the need for a men to wear a long white robe when a coat or jeans is more suited to the conditions anyway.

It seems more like they want to show they're different as a point of principle whereas still seeming the same but having a different outlook will come across as more favourably. less hostile and more convincing I think.

Anyway, I have nothing against Islam, I agree with some of their principles but not the extremism aspects.

In terms of a viable long-term solution, the west with its extreme feminism are destroying the dynamics of a creating a family.

Well it's surprisingly comfortable and elegant both men and women's clothing. It's different sure, but there's nothing wrong with that. Cloths are cloths in the end as long as they are modest that's what matters.

Women's abayas for instance, to me it's like princess clothing as I tell my wife lol... it's very elegant yet modest. You only can appreciate it if you understand it for what it is.

Who Guards The Most Sacred Site In Christendom? Two MuslimsBy Gabriele Barbati | March 29 2013 11:55 PM

JERUSALEM -- Every Christian knows the holiest places in Christendom are in Jerusalem. The holiest of all, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was erected in 325, over the site where it is believed Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead.

Yet, few know that it is a Muslim who opens and closes the only door to this holiest of Christian sites.

In fact, it's two Muslims: one man from the Joudeh family and another man from the Nuseibeh family, two Jerusalem Palestinian clans who have been the custodians of the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre since the 12th century.

Every morning, at 4:30, Adeeb Joudeh travels from his apartment outside the walls of the Old City to bring the cast-iron key to the church, just as his father and his forebears did before him.

Once there, he entrusts the key -- looking like a 12-inch (30-centimeter) long iron wedge -- to Wajeeh Nuseibeh, who knocks at the gate to call the priests and the pilgrims who spend the night praying inside. From inside the church, a wooden ladder is passed through a porthole to help him unlock the upper part of the enormous door.

Then, he unlocks the lower one before handing the precious key back to Joudeh. The ritual is reversed every evening at 7:30, after hundreds of tourists and pilgrims have left the church.

During holidays, such as Holy Week, which culminates Sunday with the Christian Easter, the elaborate opening and closing ceremonies take place several times a day.

Why the elaborate ritual? As often happens in Jerusalem, a city holy to several peoples and religions, there are different versions to explain why two Muslim families hold the key to the holiest site in Christendom.

“After the Muslim conquest in 637, the Caliph Omar guaranteed the Archbishop Sophronius that the Christian places of worship would be protected and so entrusted the custodianship to the Nuseibehs, a family who originated in Medina and had had relations with the Prophet Muhammad,” said Nuseibeh, a retired 63-year old electrician, while waiting in a nearby cafe to carry out his duties at the Holy Sepulchre.

“It happened again in 1187, after Saladin ended the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. He chose our family again to look after the peace between the different Eastern and Western Christian confessions, which were at odds over control of the Sepulchre," he said with a gentle smile, sitting next to his son, Obadah.

To this day, coexistence among the several Christian churches sharing the Holy Sepulchre is a delicate one. Catholic, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox monks have resorted to fists more than once to defend their respective denomination’s rights and privileges in the church, as defined in an decree by the Ottoman Empire, known as the Status Quo of 1853.

Such impious brawls between clergy proved Saladin’s prescience 1,000 years ago, when the sultan sealed the second front gate of the church and entrusted control of the remaining entrance to neutral custodians.

The Nuseibehs claim that the Joudehs entered this story only in the 16th century, after the Ottoman Turks gained control of Palestine and decided to charge a second family with the responsibility of guarding the key.

“Yes, we share the responsibility with the Joudehs, and sometimes we argue, as happens in a family,” Nuseibeh said.

Each Maundy Thursday since the end of the 19th century, the two Muslim families give the key to the Holy Sepulchre to the local Franciscan friars, for as long as it takes to walk to the church in a procession and to open the door after the morning liturgies. When those are completed, the friars return the key to the families.

This ceremony, which confirms in practice the validity of the Muslim families’ custodianship, is repeated with the Greek and Armenian communities, on Orthodox Good Friday and Holy Saturday, respectively.

“Right now, I have in my hands the keys to Christendom’s heart. This is a very important moment for us,” said the Rev. Artemio Vitores, the Spanish Franciscan who is the vicar Custodian of the Holy Land, during the Maundy Thursday procession.

“For centuries, Christian pilgrims were denied entry to the church, or had to pay huge sums to pray on the Sepulchre,” he said, all while holding the key.

At the head of the procession, Vitores was flanked on one side by Wajeeh Nusseibeh, his son Obadah and two cousins, all of whom were equally compensated by the friars for their services with the symbolic sum of $60.

On Vitores’ other side were Adeeb Joudeh, wearing an impeccable dark gray suit, and his 19-year-old son Jawad.

For about 20 minutes, Joudeh ceded control of the only existing key to the Holy Sepulchre. While there is another key, it is broken and no longer used. The functioning key is normally kept in a small office attached to the church and is guarded by an employee of the Joudeh family.

“This key has seen Saladin and every generation of my family since 1187. To me, it’s an honor to be in charge of the holiest of Christian places," Joudeh said, while walking the cobblestoned alley leading to the Holy Sepulchre.

He insisted on showing on his smartphone what he claimed are 165 official decrees confirming the Joudeh family’s role as custodian of the church over the centuries.

“My ancestor who was given the keys was a sheik, a highly respected person, who was not supposed to perform physical labor, such as climbing the ladder to open the gate,” Joudeh explained. “That’s why the Nuseibehs were called in to perform this duty. Unfortunately, they feel still ashamed of being just the doorkeepers.”

At the end of the procession, the key was welcomed by cheerful pilgrims waiting in front of the church.

For a few minutes, everybody stared at the solemn opening of the gate before rushing in.

Moments later, Adeeb Joudeh walked home with his son, as did Wajeeh Nuseibeh. They will come back here, time and again, at the gate of the Holy Sepulchre: two Muslims, coming in peace to bear the key to the heart of Christianity.

According to several studies conducted in Britain, the number of Muslims in the UK has increased by 37% over the last six years, while the number of mosques has reached 1,500, Al Jazeera reported on Saturday.

With hundreds of British people converting to Islam, the British authorities recently confirmed that the occurrence of conversion is more common among British prisoners and students.

During a tour to Islamic centers, Al Jazeera net has reported that some of the children who converted to Islam are originally from Brazil, Luxembourg, Panama, and Sweden.

During Ramadan last year, Alexandra, the daughter of Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, converted to Islam at age 12.

“Thanks to my mother who took me to conferences I came to know Islam. Converting to Islam has given me much tranquility and soulful satisfaction, ” Alexander said in an interview.

“Islam has changed my life for the better unlike before,” Alexander added.

Aged 14, George, originally from Sweden, for his part, converted to Islam after reading about Islam and identifying with Muslim families in London.

Referring to the biased way and sensational way in which Western media portrays Islam, George said this was part of his initial motivation to study about Islam. “What is all this controversy about Islam for?” George asked his father.

“George’s curiosity to learn about Islam and his love for call prayers has led him to embrace Islam,” Abdellah, George’s close friend, said.

Upon embracing Islam, British converts admitted that they felt inside a deep breath of relief and happiness.

According to the British authorities, the emotional, soulful void felt by the British youth is the principal motive behind seeking Islam as propeller for lasting happiness.

“The Prophet Muhammad (Sallallaahu`alayhi wa sallam) reported that the devil said to Allah: “I shall continue to lead Thy servants astray as long as their spirits are in their bodies.” And Allah replied: “(Then) I shall continue to pardon them as long as they ask for My forgiveness.”

^Sorry but Islamic law would have the man executed for such heinous crimes if it's true. I haven't heard more about this story except from a few selective anti-islamic sources. It's fascinating how islamopbhobes forge their own 'shari'ah' when talking about shari'ah. A man can't be punished for murder of own children and wife? LOL... idiots who can only fool ignorant and gullible people.

You know what's saddistic about islamophobe such as yourself? You talk like an authority yet you are not aware God condemns female infanticide which was a practice before Islam amongst Arabs and is today amongst Hindus and Budhists (India and China). So it's amusing that you are saying the very opposite of what Islam actually teaches as if it's actually Islam.

Oh and there isn't a single country in the world that implements shari'ah law to the fullest. Iran is definetley not shari'ah as it's shiism. Saudi Arabia comes close but it's riddled with hypocrite and selective civil loyals and twisted rulings that adhere to the 'royals'.

A full proper implementation of shari'ah can happen under the caliphate not secular dictatorships and selective shari'ah riddled with civil laws meant to protect certain political entities.

kamal el mekki is amazing mashAllah. LMAO he is also a guy who in one lecture said he took trenbolone when he was younger I couldn't believe it myself since he's so skinny but hey LOL... JazakAllah khair for sharing bro!

kamal el mekki is amazing mashAllah. LMAO he is also a guy who in one lecture said he took trenbolone when he was younger I couldn't believe it myself since he's so skinny but hey LOL... JazakAllah khair for sharing bro!